"Prizes are for little boys," said Charles Ives, that most original of American composers, "and I'm a grown-up." A hit, a palpable hit! Yet people will never stop handing them out. Having got through the Baftas, where ageing "hell-raisers" evidently imagine it is still daring to swear on television, we will soon be off to Hollywood, to relish that celebration of mediocrity called the Oscars.

Presently it will also be award-time for the nation's footballers, although a glance at the names of those who have been voted Footballer of the Year, either by the scribes or their fellows, reveals very little mediocrity. One might wonder how a journeyman such as Steve Perryman won the longer-established prize, voted for by journalists, and a great player like Jimmy Greaves did not, but that is the nature of these awards. Journeymen get there in the end. It just takes them a bit longer. Greaves is not the only great player to go without.

Neither Denis Law nor John Giles won the press-box vote, and Dave Mackay only shared it (with Tony Book) in 1969, when he was effectively Brian Clough's regimental sergeant major at Derby County. Alan Ball, a very fine player, never won it. Nor did Martin Peters. But Syd Owen of Luton Town did. Ah well, Cary Grant never won an Oscar, and he was the greatest star of all. And as for Welles, and Hitchcock, and Kubrick.

More recently the players and those who judge them have found common ground: in eight of the past 11 seasons both prizes have gone to the same chap. One must go back three decades to find a real divergence of views. In 1974, when Ian Callaghan was Footballer of the Year, the players went for Norman Hunter, which seemed then and seems now a wiser choice. That Leeds United side, when Don Revie finally had the sense to release the brakes, was superb, and Hunter was at the heart of it.

The following year the players chose another defender, Colin Todd, while the scribes went for Alan Mullery. One-up to the players there. Todd was at his magnificent best in Derby's championship triumph, when the Rams had to compensate for the lengthy absence of Roy McFarland, Todd's regular defensive partner. No wonder Clough thought so little of the London press. Three years later, when Clough led Nottingham Forest to the championship, the players voted for Peter Shilton and the scribes picked Kenny Burns. Both were excellent choices, though it meant John Robertson missing out.

Unsurprisingly attacking players are more favoured than defenders, and goalkeepers hardly get a look-in. Only four custodians have won the main gongs: Bert Trautmann, Gordon Banks, Pat Jennings and Neville Southall. Not a bad list! A fifth could, and should, have been Peter Schmeichel, who did as much as anybody (other than Eric Cantona) to fulfil Sir Alex Ferguson's mission of "knocking Liverpool off their perch".

In Liverpool's glory years the men honoured by the football writers were Callaghan, Kevin Keegan, Emlyn Hughes, Terry McDermott, Ian Rush, Steve Nicol, and, with two prizes each, Kenny Dalglish and John Barnes. United, by contrast, have seen only Cantona, Roy Keane, Teddy Sheringham and Cristiano Ronaldo (twice) garlanded in their two decades of dominance. Shome mishtake, shurely.

The two outstanding homegrown players in that time have been Ryan Giggs (Cardiff-born, Salford-raised) and Paul Scholes. Both are still active, and nobody can fail to have noticed the Welsh-Englishman's sparkling form. He may not be a "genius", as a callow youth called him yesterday (which footballer is?), but he remains a superior craftsman: il miglior fabbro, as a real man of genius, TS Eliot, described Ezra Pound.

And yet, if you look at the team that Ferguson has constructed so artfully, its success is rooted in a refusal to concede soft goals. That is generally how championships are won. The key man is therefore Nemanja Vidic, that steel door of a centre-half, and surely Footballer of the Year if the award is to go to the player who makes the greatest contribution to the champion team's performance.

Giggs should not repine. When it was put to Tony Bennett that he had not enjoyed many hits, the singer replied: "No, but I like to think I've got a hit catalogue." So it may not hurt Giggs too much if he fails to land the prize everybody would like to see him win. He can always dip into the catalogue of that other evergreen performer: "Ah, the good life."